More Menu

Coal Industry Launches Full-Scale Attack Against Climate Legislation

The coal-industry front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) has launched a major lobbying campaign against the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191). ACCCE claims it is opposed to Lieberman-Warner because it “does not adequately embrace” their “principles” and raises “just too many unanswered questions.”

Principles: ACCCE’s 12 principles for federal legislation boil down to demands that they be allowed to construct new, uncontrolled coal-fired power plants until taxpayers pony up unlimited amounts of money for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology. That’s not a statement of principles — it’s a ransom note.

Lieberman-Warner, named for its two co-sponsors Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA), would allow the United States to join the rest of the world in combatting climate change by setting a firm limit on carbon emissions while providing support to low-income families. However, the bill also makes significant concessions to polluters, particularly the coal industry:

They wanted to add my name to a fax to Senators Lieberman and Warner asking them leave it up to the states to decide how to respond to climate change rather than drive up our utility rates. When I asked who ABEC was, I was told that they were individuals concerned about utility rates. When I asked if they were an environmental group, the answer was “yes.” When I asked whether they were related to the utilities, the answer was “No.”

Several of the companies in ACCCE deserve particular opprobrium. Alcoa, Caterpillar Inc., and Duke Energy are playing both sides of the lobbying game as members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, the business-environmentalist coalition that in January 2007 called for Congress to pass a mandatory cap-and-trade program with targets that Lieberman-Warner satisfies.